What do Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Mark Zuckerberg have in common? Aside from being the three richest men in the world, they also didn’t complete a four-year college degree. Yes, you read that right – three of the richest men in the world have eschewed the traditional “college degree” route to success. Their choice has been to spend their time learning from various free online resources instead. This post highlights some of my favorite free online resources for learning new skills as well as enhancing your current skill set. If you want to get ahead fast and develop a bright future for yourself, consider these options.
33 Of The Best Free Online Learning Resources
1. IXL
IXL is a K-12 platform to help students practice and learn Math, Science, Social Studies, Spanish, and Language Arts. It ‘teaches’ through assessment (questions) and has diagnostic modes, suggested curriculum, and more.
You can also read more about how to use IXL.
2. Better Explained
Better Explained is a free resource that seeks to explain mathematical concepts through quick visuals.
3. Khan Academy
Khan Academy is the popular, online platform used to learn academic content–mostly STEM-based.
4. Google Docs
Google Docs is a word processor that’s part of a web-based productivity suite offered by Google within its Google Drive service. This platform also includes Google Sheets and Google Slides, the former a spreadsheet tool and the latter a presentation program.
5. YouTube
YouTube is everyone’s favorite video platform and is one of the most popular websites on the internet for a reason: you can learn almost anything. Here is YouTube’s Learn at Home resource.
6. Quizlet
Quizlet is a free study app for digital flashcards to memorize, review, and learn new ideas. One of its best features is the ability to download other users’ cards to save a lot of time–or even learn content you might not have considered.
7. Audacity
Audacity is a free, open-source audio file editor
8. Gimp
Gimp is a free, open-source image editor.
9. OpenShot
OpenShot is a free, open-source video editor.https://07e1ac17dc706fc2d09b33f79b117224.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
10. Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is a project-management tool with a free tier feature-rich enough to use for students to plan out classwork, projects in project-based learning, plan businesses, or communicate with groups from and around school.
11. Slack
Slack is a project-management tool with a free tier feature-rich enough to use for students to plan out classwork, projects in project-based learning, plan businesses, or communicate with groups from and around school.
12. Trello
Trello is a project-management tool with a free tier feature-rich enough to use for students to plan out classwork, projects in project-based learning, plan businesses, or communicate with groups from and around school.
13. Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg is a collection of over 60,000 free eBooks
14. Wikipedia
Wikipedia is everyone’s favorite crowd-based encyclopedia. It is supported by donations by free for end-users.
15. MIT Open Courseware
MIT Open Courseware is a collection of MIT’s free course materials for public use.
16. Duolingo
Duolingo is a simple and free way to practice a foreign language.
17. Microsoft Translator
Microsoft Translator is TeachThought’s favorite language translation app. Here’s a link to the main site but you can obviously find it in the iOS and Google Play store for mobile use, too.
18. Zotero
Zotero is a tool to collect, organize, and share online research.
19. Wikiversity
Wikiversity is a Wikipedia-sourced platform for free online course materials.
20. Readworks
ReadWorks is a free platform for K-12 reading comprehension practice. You can some ways to use ReadWorks in the classroom, too.
21. Youtube Channel: Smarter Every Day
YouTube Channel: Smarter Every Day and Smarter Every Day 2 are two of TeachThought’s favorite YouTube channels and great examples of inquiry and learning through play.
22. Youtube Channel: Crash Course
YouTube Channel: Crash Course is another useful channel for delivering free online learning resources in an engaging way.
23. OpenLearn
OpenLearn is a free learning platform, delivered by The Open University as part of the “Royal Charter commitment to support the well-being of the community.”
24. Academic Earth
Like OpenLearn, Academic Earth is a collection of free online courses and materials.
25. National Geographic for Kids
National Geographic for Kids is a free online resource to learn about nature and animals through the familiar National Geographic approach.
26. Yale Open Courses
Yale Open Courses is a collection of Yale’s–well, you can probably guess what this is. If you’re curious what one of the most expensive university’s look like in terms of courses and content, this is a decent start.
27. Desmos Graphing Calculator
While there are many free graphing calculator apps, Desmos is web-based and free–a “suite of math software tools, including the Desmos Graphing Calculator and Scientific Calculator. Desmos claims these free online tools for students are used annually by over 40 million teachers and students around the world.
28. Desmos Scientific Calculator
See above.
29. Polynote
While this is an advanced learning tool, it’s really quite something. A Netflix-created open-source program, Polynote is a Machine Learning and Data Science workflow tool. Polynote is a “different kind of notebook. It supports mixing multiple languages in one notebook and sharing data between them seamlessly. It encourages reproducible notebooks with its immutable data model.”
30. Blender
Also an advanced tech tool, “Blender is the free and open-source 3D creation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, video editing, and 2D animation pipeline.”
31. Ableton’s Free Learning Synths Browser
According to the developers, with this free online learning resource, you’ll learn the basics of using synthesizers (or synths). The box above controls a synth running in your web browser, but synthesizers come in many shapes and sizes. They can be physical instruments that musicians play on stage, noise-makers inside electronic devices and toys, or software running on a phone or computer.
32. Netflix Documentaries
There are free documentary resources across the internet and Netflix has joined the party, releasing thirteen free educational documentaries for learning. There are also some free Netflix documentaries, too.
33. CK-12
CK-12 is a free and fantastic way to learn science by compiling your own learning STEM resources–either those that you upload or those provided by CK-12. Think online, custom STEM textbooks for free. With animations and interactive activities.
23 Killer Sites for Free Online Education Anyone Can Use
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Whether you’re five or ninety five, the internet has a lot to offer. Particularly when the topic is education, the resources on the internet are endless. Best of all, many high quality sites are completely free. From history to coding, excellent, free online education awaits on the following 23 sites.
1. Coursera
Coursera is a website that partners with universities and organizations around the world. This brings a wide variety of topics and perspectives to one searchable database.
Coursera is a powerful tool for free online education and includes courses from many top universities, museums and trusts. This gives the site an extremely wide range of in-depth courses.
Coursera is extremely useful if you’re looking to study many different topics, or want courses from different schools and groups. However, the free courses are now quite limited, so you’ll have to
2. Khan Academy
Partnering with many post secondary schools, Khan Academy offers a useable, well-organized interface. Also curating many courses from around the web, Khan Academy offers impressive depth on many different subjects.
Among the more well-known educational sites, Khan Academy is also incredibly user-friendly, which may make it easier to keep learning goals. If you’re looking for a free online education, you can’t go wrong with Khan Academy.
3. Open Culture Online Courses
If you are struggling to find exactly the material you are looking for, try Open Culture’s listing of free online education courses. The page highlights 1000 lectures, videos, and podcasts from universities around the world.
The site features a lot of material found only on universities’ private sites, all in easy-to-browse categories. This means you can find hundreds of university courses without having to visit and search each university’s site.
Open Culture’s list features courses from England, Australia, Wales, and many state universities around the United States. It’s a very helpful resource for finding many courses in one area of study.
4. Udemy
Udemy’s free courses are similar in concept to Coursera’s but additionally allows users to build custom courses from lessons.
Working with many top professors and schools, the site mixes the customizable platform of other sites with a heavy emphasis on top-quality content. This is another site, however, that mixes free and paid content.
5. Lifehack Fast Track Class
Lifehack believes in skills that multiply your time, energy, and overall quality of life.
In this rapidly changing world, traditional education skills just don’t cut it anymore. You can’t afford to take years learning a skill you’ll never really practice. Besides offering some paid courses that will help you become a better self, it offers a list of free courses which aim to train some of the Core Life Multipliers including:
- How to stop procrastinating to reach your goal – Hack Your Procrastination
These are cross-functional skills that work across many aspects of life.
6. Academic Earth
Another site with courses from many different schools is Academic Earth. Much like the three sites above, Academic Earth brings together top notch courses from many different sources and focuses on offering a wide variety of subjects.
Academic Earth lists courses by subject and school, so it might be easier to find what you’re looking for.
7. edX
Another great option for free online education is edX. Also bringing together courses from many different schools, the site has impressive, quality information for everyone. edX covers a great range of topics from universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Berkeley, meaning a high-quality, free online education is entirely possible here.
8. Alison
Unlike the previous sites on this list, Alison is a free education site offering certification in some areas. Alison offers courses mainly in business, technology, and health, but also includes language learning courses.
It’s a great option if users need a professional certificate for their learning, as Alison also offers school curriculum courses.
9. iTunesU Free Courses
A very convenient place for free online education is iTunesU, because it integrates seamlessly with your iPod or any app-ready Apple mobile device. On an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch, users download the iTunesU app.
Desktop users can access iTunesU on the upper right hand corner of the iTunes Store. iTunesU is also convenient because the store is categorized much like iTunes.
Users can search learning materials in many different ways, including by genre and topic. However, courses are often a mix of free podcasts or videos and paid content.
iTunesU does include courses on a variety of topics, but it does not integrate with Android, Google or Windows mobile devices.
10. Stanford Online
Your hub for all the online offerings from Stanford University, Stanford Online offers self-paced and session-based courses. While Coursera features some courses from Stanford, many classes are only available via other hosts. Some courses require iTunes, but most are completed in your web browser.
Stanford Online is a great site for high-quality courses, though the topics are somewhat limited compared to sites partnered with more than one school. If you’re looking for free courses, make sure to mark the “free” option on the left-hand side.
11. Open Yale Courses
Open Yale Courses echoes Stanford Online, in that it offers only courses from Yale. While the site is similarly limited to topics taught at the school, Open Yale Courses offers a lot of videos of actual campus lectures. The availability of videos makes the site a great option if you’re looking for quality courses but learn better by watching than by reading.
12. UC Berkeley Class Central
Much like the other schools on this list, UC Berkeley has a variety of free online education options. The school has slightly fewer courses than the schools above, but it includes some supplementary lectures, webcasts, and RSS Feeds, making it easy to keep up with the topics you choose.
13. MIT OpenCourseWare
Similarly, MIT offers a variety of free courses. The school has a comparable number of courses to the schools above, and it includes very in-depth course materials on the subjects available. MIT also offers free RSS feeds, a convenient way to continue learning.
14. Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative
Carnegie Mellon’s free online education site is comparable with the other school’s on this list. However, Open Learning Initiative also covers a smaller range of topics, but for the topics that are covered, impressive, in-depth material is available.
15. Codecademy
Codecademy is a website dedicated specifically to teaching coding. Where other coding sites follow an example/practice session workflow, Codecademy includes a live practice window. This means you can practice coding while still viewing the lesson material.
The courses at Codecademy are well-written and easy to follow, and the website is organized very nicely. Codecademy features a centralized dashboard where you can monitor your progress, and it organizes lessons into complete modules. This lets you learn an entire language without needing to pick the next course manually.
16. Code
Code is another website focused on coding and app writing. A site with high-quality courses, Code also features learning options for kids.
In addition to kid-friendly courses, Code offers free online education classes on a wide variety of technology topics. These classes include app writing, robotics, and Javascript.
Most of the courses are also geared in a such a way that they can be useful in a classroom setting. This makes Code a great resource for harder to find coding topics, as well as various learning settings.
17. University of Oxford Podcasts
The University of Oxford features many different podcasts. Most are public lecture series or lectures from visiting professors, with several different recordings available.
The advantage to this particular site is that podcasts are organized into series, making it easy to subscribe to multiple lectures on one topic. This is another great site for thoroughly in-depth lectures.
18. BBC Podcasts
For the more casual learner, the BBC offers a wide variety of podcasts on many different topics. Most podcasts are updated weekly and focus on everything from finance, to sports, to current events.
Through the World Service line of podcasts, there are also many in different languages. The focus of these podcasts are less in-depth and theory based, which may be more accessible to the average person.
19. TED-Ed
Another great destination for more general learning and free online education is TED-Ed. From the same people that brought you the all-encompassing, motivational web series comes a site chocked full of educational videos. Most include impressive animation, and all are ten minutes long or less.
Not only is TED-Ed an excellent site for the curious, but it also includes supplemental materials and quizzes on the videos. This makes the site extremely useful in formal education settings, as well as in entertaining ways to brush up on new discoveries and topics.
20. LessonPaths
LessonPaths is another great tool for those looking for a more usable and convenient way to access learning material. On this site, users create link playlists of their favorite learning materials from other sites. Users then rank these collections, making it easy to find many different high-quality, accessible sources on a given topic.
21. Memrise
Another impressive free online education site offering ease of use and convenience is Memrise. Available both on desktop and as an app, Memrise is a particularly powerful tool if you are studying a language. The site encompasses many other topics as well, though some of the course material is user generated content.
Part of what makes Memrise special is their integration of games into the learning materials, mixing learning with entertainment.
22. National Geographic Kids
The kids site for National Geographic is another site that makes free online education applicable for younger users. For those looking for kid-friendly education, a large variety of games, puzzles, videos and photos keep kids interested on this site.
National Geographic Kids doesn’t organize learning into courses, making materials available by topic and medium instead. This makes National Geographic Kids a good option for those looking for a more casual learning environment.
23. Fun Brain
Fun Brain is another great option for kids looking for free online education, as it focuses on games and fun puzzles. Particularly focused on math and reading, Fun Brain’s game-based approach can be valuable if the child in question struggles to pay attention.
Fun Brain offers rewards and challenges as well, and it is another site aimed at a casual learning experience for kids K-8.
Conclusion
Whether you’re looking to take your skills to the next level or trying to decide which career path to take, these resources are sure to help.